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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Chocolate and peanut butter...

With the oven back, we are able to continue on with baking for the weekly Wednesday Treat Day that Jeff does for his co-workers. I've heard through the grapevine that some sly people have figured out that we post the treats the day before Jeff brings them in and they come to sneak a peak at what Jeff will be bringing... hmm, I wonder if we should play a trick on them one day!

For a change of pace (and I wanted to make full use of the oven), I opted to make a cake. Not just any cake, but a Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bundt Cake.

This is not a dull chocolate cake flavored with peanut butter, but an intense and rich double chocolate cake with a sweet and thick hidden ring of luscious creamy peanut butter mixed with cream cheese. Two forms of chocolate, natural cocoa powder and chopped bittersweet chocolate, make for a dark cloak to off-set the light filling.

Sour cream is used in the cake batter which keeps the cake extremely moist. Between making the filling, the batter, combining them and the baking, it does take quite a while from start to finish, but the joy of eating a sliver certainly made up for it. I'll be sending along some whipped cream and chopped peanuts if they wish to gild the lily, but I thought this cake needed nothing else but a fork.

On to dinner tonight... we heated things up tonight with a dish of Rice and Corn Cakes with Spicy Black Beans. To make things easy, instant brown rice is used to form the base of the cakes. To perk up the flavor of the rice when it cooks, scallions, garlic and fresh thyme are added before the water comes to a boil. Once the rice is done, corn kernels and fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs are added and the mixture sits to cool down for a couple minutes. This mixture is then mashed with a couple eggs to bind to together. I found the mixture to be pretty loose, but I was still able to form them into cakes and get them in the pan without falling apart. They are then cooked until each side achieves a golden crisp crust. While they brown, a mixture of drained black beans and salsa (use whatever kind/heat level you wish - I used Trader Joe's Chipotle and Lime salsa... it is quite spicy!) is warmed in small saucepan to be served with the cakes. The moist cakes with the spicy beans made for a very filling dinner that left our tastebuds dancing around to cool off.

I had switched to preparing pans with shortening a while back because that seemed to work best for me when I was doing Wilton cakes for the kids.

However, nothing seems to help my bundt pan, so I think I may just get a new pan and see what happens. It used to work fine and then I had troubles with it - perhaps something happened to the finish...